LG Optimus Vu making its global debut in September with Tegra 3

LG has announced that its newest flagship phone, the Optimus Vu (see our review), will be available globally in September. It has been available in only Japan and Korea thus far and will see a release next month in the Middle East, Africa, Europe, Asia, Latin America and then the U.S. sometime this quarter. This news comes on the heels of LG's announcement that they have sold more than 500,000 worldwide already, which is quite impressive. That number will likely see a big increase once it hits more markets this fall.

The Optimus Vu sports a beautiful 5-inch screen, Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), 8MP rear-camera, a 1.3MP front-facing camera and 32GB of memory. Also notable is the fact that the international Optimus Vu will run a quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 CPU, rather than the dual-core Snapdragon S3 found in the Korean and Japanese variants. It's also likely the international Vu will lose some of its quirkier features, like the slide-out antenna for watching digital TV broadcasts.

If you've been anxiously awaiting the newest phone from LG, this announcement is great news as you'll be able to buy one very soon. Full press release after the break. Will you be first in line? Tell us in the LG Optimus Vu Forum!

LG ANNOUNCES GLOBAL AVAILABILITY OF OPTIMUS VU:

Largest LG Smartphone to Be Launched in Europe, Asia, Middle East/Africa and Latin America

SEOUL, Aug. 20, 2012 – On the heels of its successful debut in Korea and Japan, the Optimus Vu: will make its global debut starting in select markets in Europe, Asia, Middle East/Africa and Latin America starting in September. With the world’s first 5-inch 4:3 aspect ratio display, the Optimus Vu: blurs the line between traditional tablets and smartphones for a truly unique smart device experience.

Since its March debut in Korea, the Optimus Vu: has sold over 500,000 units, demonstrating public acceptance of its form-factor. The reception the device received in Korea prompted LG to launch the Optimus Vu: in Japan this month, where it has also been received positively by Japanese consumers.

For the global roll-out, the Optimus Vu: will be equipped with NVIDIA? Tegra? 3 mobile processor, the super 4-PLUS-1™ quad-core with 5th battery-saver core, that offers a superb balance of performance and power requirements. 4 cores are used for high performance tasks such as games and multitasking. For voice call, email, music and video playback, only 5th battery-saver core is enabled and it consumes very less power.

When paired with the high-resolution 5-inch, 4:3 ratio IPS display, the Optimus Vu: becomes something special – a device that’s both pocketable and spacious. The Optimus Vu: will come with an upgraded version of QuickMemo™ and Notebook, two features which make great use of the large display real estate.

“The different form factor makes Optimus Vu: unique even in the 5-inch smartphone category which we expect will catch on once they become more widely available,” said Dr. Jong-seok Park, president and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company.